“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”

I remember John Oliver doing a bit where he says to notice the slow change around you, as not doing it can lead to huge changes without actually noticing anything.

Edit: Regardless of how (ir)relevant, (in)correct and/or (un)funny John Oliver may be nowadays, the point is keeping track of the slow evolution of our world and what direction we as humans are heading. In other words, never sit back comfortably without truly knowing your surroundings and circumstance.

Carl Sagan says exactly the same thing that cynical older people have been saying since humans have been capable of putting thought into language, and then other cynical people agree with it because it kind of sounds right but is really just a Barnum statement applicable to any civilization at any point in time.

Then he loses all credibility by criticizing _Dumb and Dumber_ and _Beavis and Butt-Head_.

Eh, people have always preferred to assume that what they’re witnessing is the worst case imaginable. Yet the world keeps moving on, and somehow life seems to be a little better on the whole than it was in our ancestors’ time.